


How Good it is to Live Tonight

by objectlesson



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cooking, Cottagecore, Domestic Fluff, Dwarves in the Shire, Hobbits invented cottagecore sorry, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23687527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Thorin watches Bilbo cook.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 22
Kudos: 220





	How Good it is to Live Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Blake and I are both doing a 30 day writing challenge that's just lyric prompts from sexy Depeche Mode songs. I have way too many head canons about Thorin and Bilbo that are somewhat scattered and messy and not enough to work into entire story so I'm just sort of dumping them here, posting the ones that end up longer than 1k individually and possibly doing a Drabble collection of the others. There's no smut in this, just sweetness!!! I am obsessed with post BOTFA retirement fic where they get their happy ending, so expect lots of that.

make me think at the end of the day some great reward will be coming my way 

—-

Thorin’s most dreadful habit is standing in the corner of the kitchen while Bilbo cooks, dark like a shadow, still like stone. 

As far as the ills of Dwarvish manners go, it certainly ranks amongst the least offensive. Furthermore, he’s _offered_ to help dice or boil or butcher countless times, until it becomes clear Bilbo will rarely allow such a thing and subsequently shoos him away. 

He always returns, though. Wanders in very quietly to stand leaning against a wall, sipping his mug of ale and following Bilbo around the room with a soft blue gaze. It’s unsettling. Bilbo is not used to being observed when he cooks, and he realizes it makes him stumble over every would be second nature motion. Every time Thorin lingers Bilbo is in danger of ruining the dish, and that simply won’t do, _so._ He decides to put an end to it. 

At first, Bilbo approaches the matter obliquely, as he often does. “Dinner will be ready _soon,_ I promise you, so go—go sit in the study or something. Have a smoke outside. I’ll find you when it’s time.” 

But Thorin merely shrugs, “I am in no hurry to eat,” he says, shifting his weight, propping a boot upon the window sill for a moment before recalling Bilbo doesn’t care for that either and setting it back down again resolutely. He hasn’t worn armor or furs since moving to the Shire, so he’s in nothing but trousers and a loose, wide-necked tunic he’s failed (or deliberately chosen) not to button over his chest, so Bilbo can see the dark curls of hair gathered in the ditch between his pectoral muscles every time he looks up from their in-progress meal. 

“You’re distracting,” he declares then, after he drops a colander which clatters noisily to the floor. He bustles over to the sink, raking a hand through his hair. 

“Distracting? I’m only standing here. I haven’t even spoken to you. _You’re_ speaking to me,” Thorin reminds him, and it makes Bilbo chew his lips, force his gaze down to his hands as he rinses the colander so he has something to look at that is _not_ sparkling blue eyes and half naked torsos which may or may not be still bearing marks from his own mouth. 

“Yes, well, it’s not the _talking_ I find distracting, Thorin, it’s—it’s—“ Bilbo pauses, taking a deep, sputtering breath before turning on his heel and returning to the cutting board, where he left an onion only _half_ minced. Because he got flustered. Because Thorin wandered in all impossibly handsome and dreadfully beautiful and started _watching_ him. “It’s the _scrutiny,_ if you must know.I feel—studied. Perhaps even judged though I know you have no grounds whatsoever upon which to judge my cooking. But I feel your _eyes_ on me and I begin to worry about every little thing I do and end up letting pots boil over and _dropping colanders_ and wondering if you notice—if you notice how very _easy_ it is for you to render me a useless mess.” 

Thorin hums, then sets his ale down and strides across the kitchen to pin Bilbo up against the counter from behind, lips at his neck, beard scraping the exact place his blood speeds _whenever_ Thorin touches him, even though they have been touching so very much one might think he could build up an immunity to the thrill. 

Cheeks hot, Bilbo squeaks, and that makes Thorin only tighten his grip, breath rumbling. “I notice,” he murmurs. “And somehow, _you_ never notice that you do the very same thing to me. Do you know _why_ I watch you cook, Master Baggins?” 

Bilbo struggles to breathe, not because Thorin is squeezing him, but because it’s very hard to breathe when everything you want and have wanted for the whole of your life is pressed against you, so close you cannot tell your heartbeats apart. When somehow, your present has become the lofty, unlikely dream you entertained of an ideal future. “Erm,” he begins, tilting into Thorin as he hazards opening his mouth, knowing long black hair will end up in it, stuck to his lips like it always does. “Because you are hungry and impatient?” 

“ _You_ ,” Thorin mumbles, before he bites Bilbo’s shoulder, “Hobbit. Are hungry and impatient.” 

“ _Fine,_ is it because…you grow lonely in rooms where I’m not?” Bilbo’s voice gets softer, because he realizes that as much as he hates having Thorin hover while he cooks, he _doesn’t_ hate it as much as being apart from him for the amount of time it takes to complete a meal. And it’s absurd, really, to miss someone who lives with him, to miss a Dwarf who left his life and his people and his crown and his childhood _home_ to retire in Hobbiton all because he was in love. To miss something he _has._ But he supposes being in love in general is rather absurd. Makes one do absurd things. 

“That is part of it, yes,” Thorin confesses, rubbing his hands up Bilbo’s stomach to his chest and back down again, touch gentle and careful and slow. “But also because I simply enjoy watching you work. How you cook…the way you move about the kitchen. When you lick your fingers after you mix spices to grind. The shape of your wrist as you stir things.” As he says this he encircles the wrist in question with his rough fingers, and Bilbo melts against him, trembling in sudden overwhelm. He is not used to compliments about the mundanity of his life in Bag End, which he still feels, on some level, he must defend to Thorin for it all must pale in comparison to the life of a king. But then, Thorin stands in his kitchen. Thorin watches him cook, like it is something worth watching. Thorin came, and Thorin stayed, and Thorin stays _still._

“It is only cooking,” he says, as Thorin kisses his cheek, and then the tip of his ear, before pulling away. 

“Perhaps,” he mumbles, peering curiously into the pot on the fire, as if he is hungry and impatient after all. “But I love to observe it all the same. You make me think of all that is to come, once you are finished and you have fed me and we share our meal together.” 

_“Oh?_ Do I?” Bilbo scolds, wiggling out from Thorin’s arm as he curls it around his back again, cheeks burning in dual embarrassment and delight. It is a common state of being, these days, since Thorin is so very blunt about things at the same time he is so very earnest. Bilbo feels as if he’s perpetually smoldering under the heat of his gaze, astounded he is _worth_ something so precious, worth such fire, such attentive studying. “You should allow me to return to the task at hand, then. The sooner I finish, the sooner it will be ready, and the sooner you shall receive your great reward,” he teases. 

Thorin holds up his hands, and backs away obediently. “As you wish.” 

And there in the corner near the window he stays. 


End file.
